Country Roads
It’s roughly a five hour drive to Nashville, including entering a new time zone. Jeff gives me a choice of Waffle House, McDonalds or Burger King for breakfast. I’m a little bored with fast food but have no choice, so a Burger King egg and bacon croissant it is.
The weather is odd. We go through patches of intense fog, then into the sun, and then it clouds over. After about three hours, the sky darkens and the clouds move in. It turns black and rain pelts down. We check the emergency radio channel, which reassures us there is little chance of a tornado. After about forty minutes we pass out the other side of the storm, back into sunshine.
When we arrive in Nashville, we check into the hostel. It’s clean and friendly, with four cabins. Each cabin has two proper bedrooms, one room that used to be a kitchen that has been converted into a bedroom, and a lounge room that has also been converted into a bedroom. This means there are sixteen people in our cabin and there is only one bathroom. I foresee issues.
We walk into central Nashville, a pleasant walk of about two kilometres. Jeff and I are starting to get on each other’s nerves after an extended period together, so we start planning time apart. We look around Broadway, which is where all the honky tonks are, as well as loads of souvenir shops. The country music Fanfest is on, with free concerts all over the place. This means there are additional crowds in town. According to Jeff, there are an extra 200,000 people about. The place is definitely bustling. We stop for lunch and surprise, surprise, its fast food. There’s a great looking BBQ place, but there’s a queue and Jeff’s not keen on waiting. Instead I end up with yet another hot dog. I vow to have vegetables in my evening meal.
Mid-afternoon, we head to the riverfront. There is a stage set up on a barge on the bank of the river with some of the country artists performing forty-five minute sets. The first guy, James Otto, is good as far as country goes. Some catchy tunes, but even better than the music is the titles of the songs. My favourites are You don’t act like my woman and I don’t feel like your man, Shake what God gave you, and Since you brought it up, why don’t you bring it over. Next up are the Bellamy Brothers, who’ve been around forever. I actually know one of their songs – If I said you have a beautiful body would you hold it against me? The third act is Heidi Newfield and much to my surprise, I now one of her songs too – It’s a heartache. The final act is a guy called Neil McCoy. I don’t know a single song, but he is a really dynamic performer. He’s been in the country music scene for about twenty years and really knows how to engage an audience. He leaps around the stage and at one point, climbs the scaffolding and sings from a height. i may not be a country fan yet, but I've enjoyed the tunes.
Back at the hostel, we freshen up and argue about where to eat dinner. I put my foot down and demand vegetables. We end up at a restaurant called Red. All of the waiters are over-the-top effeminate. The food is fairly plain – balsamic-glazed chicken breast on garlic mash, served with an enormous pile of broccoli. Yay for greens. I never thought I’d be so excited about broccoli.
After dinner it’s time to hit the honky tonks for more live music. One of the most famous of these is Tootsie’s Wild Orchid Lounge. It’s packed, but the honky tonks are no longer smoky little clubs thanks to new smoking laws that make for a much more pleasant environment. The singer, a guy called Josh Stone, looks a lot like Owen Wilson. The band is great, despite being crammed onto a corner stage the size of a postage stamp. At one stage they are joined by a couple of guys from a recording band called Lost Cash Cowboys. It’s interesting to see the different fashion statements – a lot of the singers favour the cowboy style of dressing, with boots, blue jeans, a large belt buckle, and western shirt, topped with a cowboy hat. The Lost Cash Cowboys look more like rappers, with bandannas and chains. At one stage, Josh Stone asks for women to dance on the bar. An older woman next to me climbs up. She’s followed by a couple of others. He requests more, so I climb up too. We then dance there for the next three songs and in exchange he buys us all a drink. Worthwhile.
Country Music and More
Jeff wants to see another band this morning, so I walk into town with him, but as we arrive I get a call from Marc, a guy I’ve been talking to online, who asks if I’d like to meet him for breakfast. This is my chance for some alternative company, so I leave Jeff to his music and Marc and I head off to a great café for a healthy breakfast. I have a vegetarian omelette with tomato, feta and basil. I also have a proper coffee. I have been making do with the occasional McCafe coffee, so I’m excited to have the real thing. Marc takes me around the suburbs of Nashville, pointing out places of interest and the best restaurants. We also stop at Centenary Park, which has a full-size replica of the Parthenon left over from an Expo. It’s now a museum. It’s almost as impressive as the real thing, if slightly out of context.
Marc drops me back into town and I go to the Wild Horse Saloon for a country line dancing lesson. On the way in, they hand me a scratch card. I scratch it and get to spin the wheel, winning a pair of tickets to a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert in a few weeks. I give them to Marc later as a thank you. The dance class is fun. It’s a simple routine and only goes for about twenty minutes, but it’s nice to be back on the dance floor, even if it’s not my usual kind of dancing - ceroc.
My next stop is the Country Music Hall of Fame. Despite my lack of enthusiasm for country music on the whole, it’s interesting to see how it has developed. There are so many strands of music now classified as country, ranging from gospel to hillbilly and country rock. There are pieces of memorabilia from almost every big country music star, along with Elvis’ Cadillac, with its paint job of crushed diamond and gold, and a huge chunky TV in the back. There’s an even better car belonging to some other star that has silver-plated guns mounted on the front and back and a saddle encrusted with silver dollars where the gearstick rests.
I’ve exchanged numbers with Eric, the other guy in our room at the hostel and he gets in touch to see what I’m doing, so I go and meet him and we head back to the music. We catch the last two acts, then find Jeff and head for dinner. Tonight we have picked a Japanese restaurant called Sushiyobi. Marc meets us there as well. It's great food, with edamame and a variety of sushi rolls. Marc also gets adventurous with his ordering and we try one with crab, cream cheese and strawberries. Yes, strawberries. It’s better than it sounds.
For our evening’s entertainment, Marc suggests a bar called the Flying Saucer. It’s basically a beer hall with 250 different beers, and plates all over the walls and ceiling. I have a “Nashville Flight”, a set of five small glasses of locally brewed beer, ranging from a cloudy white to a nutty flavoured malt beer.
From Country to Blues
In the morning, I stop in at Elliston Place Soda Shop. It has been kept the same since the 1930s. It has orange vinyl stools, a checked laminate floor, and booths with the old individual jukeboxes. They even have a lot of the old signs advertising malted milk – I don’t really know what this is – and milkshakes. The ladies serving are somewhat older and I wonder if they’ve been there since it opened. Unfortunately there’s no coffee machine, so I have to make do with filter coffee. Every time the waitress wanders past she slops more in my cup.
I say my farewell to Jeff this morning. He gives me a huge hug and says “I’ve missed you over the last three years, but going from not seeing you for three years to seeing you two hours a day is hard work.” I couldn’t agree more.
Marc meets me and whisks me off to a trendy café called Fido for brunch. I’m in the try-something-new mode of thinking, so I have the scrambled egg and chorizo tosta, served in a tortilla with salsa and sour cream. Good choice. One thing I’ve noticed here is that sausage can mean either a standard sausage, or just sausage meat. If you want to specify, the former is sausage links. I’m not sure how the latter is different from mince, but I also don’t want to know what’s in a sausage, so I’m not going to ask.
We were going to go to an in-store appearance of a singer Marc likes, but the queue is too long, so instead we go out to a place near Opryland. This is where the Grande Old Opry, the original country music variety show, has relocated. The place we go to should be in Dubai. It is an indoor lush tropical garden, with a river running through it that is deep enough for a boat, fish in the ponds and walkways and paths branching off every which way, surrounded by shops and a hotel. It stops short of being fake because all the plants are real. It is all within a glass atrium, so the sunlight filters through, but it is air conditioned, so set at a cooler temperature.
My next stop is the Greyhound station. The trip to Memphis takes about four hours. The bus is crowded, and a lot of people are trying to keep the seats free next to them by spreading out their belongings. They all fail as the bus is fully booked. The trip is uneventful, although I do meet two girls who were staying at the same hostel in Nashville and are booked into the same hotel in Memphis. Lonely Planet slams this hotel as being a real dive, but there are no other reasonably priced places in the vicinity of downtown and the website says it’s been refurbished, so I’m cautiously optimistic. I’m vindicated by the clean and freshly painted rooms, although the continental breakfast has turned into filter coffee and a cinnamon bun to be collected from the reception desk.
The three of us, Alexis the Australian, Karin the Dane and I, head to Beale Street, the main entertainment area, to grab a bite. We have dinner at Pig on Beale, a rib restaurant in the centre of the action. The ribs are great. Soft and tender and falling off the bone. After the meal, we are driven from the restaurant by the singer, who is pretty bad. We wander up and down Beale Street, which is fascinating. There are neon signs everywhere and deep, soulful blues singing escapes from every second doorway. The street is blocked to cars and there is security at either end checking ID. Aside: In Hickory, I was seriously asked for ID. What a compliment! Under 21? I think not.
There are street bars and people everywhere. Further down, you can have your photo taken in front of a Beale Street backdrop. There are a group of young guys performing acrobatic stunts in the middle of the street for tips. On the outskirts, horses and carriages trot past, some decked out with fairy lights like princess carriages. The whole place has the atmosphere of a street party mixed with a carnival.
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